Back in the segregationist South, if a white guy raped a white woman his best bet for getting away with it was to falsely accuse a black guy of the rape, and get a racist jury and judge to convict him of it.
Like in the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird." A man rapes his daughter and accuses an innocent black man of the rape. The daughter refuses to speak up and goes along with the fraud. The defendant’s innocence is made obvious in court with help from his lawyer, the famous literary character Atticus Finch. But the black man is convicted and then killed by a mob.
So you’ve got to love the shades and overtones of Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Senator and national Tea Party leader, pointing the finger at Michael Steele, the RNC chair, and calling for Steele’s resignation and blaming him for the fact that Republicans failed to win the US Senate.
As anyone who followed the 2010 election knows, DeMint is the obvious violator. Not that I care a whit about the GOP, but DeMint took advantage of the GOP voters for his own gratification and narcissistic pleasure, inflicted harm, and is now blaming the black guy for the damage.
DeMint was the major force in ensuring that the Republicans did not take the Senate. It was he who led the charge that helped two Tea Party candidates--Sharron Angle and I’m-Not-A-Witch Christine O’Donnell-- take GOP nominations despite the fact that they were two of the most ridiculous and embarrassing people ever to run for federal office in America. And of course, they both lost handily.
This was a shocking turn around, because early in 2010 those two states seemed to be practically in the bag for the Republicans. Harry Reid appeared to have little hope in a hypothetical match-up against Sue Lowden, a popular moderate Republican running in the Nevada primary. And in Delaware, Mike Castle, a Republican U.S. House member who enjoyed huge statewide popularity among Republicans and Democrats alike, was presumed to be an easy winner in a general election.
But these two candidates were shoved aside the Tea Party insurgency and their national self-appointed leader DeMint. He made key endorsements of candidates like O’Donnell and Angle, and thus made national news as the new Tea Party king-maker. Thankfully for those who care about America, the end result was a several-vote advantage for the Democrats in the Senate.
But now he needs someone to blame, and so DeMint has found an excellent outlet for his own anger at himself for blowing the whole deal: he is saying it’s all Steele’s fault that Republicans didn’t take control of the Senate. "He didn’t mount a good ground game," is what DeMint had been saying on Fox News lately.
In other words, they’d have won the Senate, but for the black guy. We will see if the GOP, in the upcoming party election for chair, goes along like a segregationist jury. Of course, Michael Steele probably shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for someone like Atticus Finch to take his case.